


The Many Hypotheses of Tali'Zorah

by MostlyAnon



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Drinking, Emergency Induction Port, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-22
Updated: 2012-11-22
Packaged: 2017-11-19 06:04:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/570006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MostlyAnon/pseuds/MostlyAnon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A rewrite of that scene where Tali gets drunk with one minor change.</p><p>Kal'Reegar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Many Hypotheses of Tali'Zorah

Tali’Zorah was an expert on many things. She knew more about the geth than most; she had worked with one and even, eventually, become friends with one. She knew her people’s history and why it was important to know what others _thought_ was their history. She knew to find cover when Shepard had that look in his eye, like maybe the galaxy just needed the sense beaten into it and he felt like volunteering for the job. She knew that if she ever had a chance to talk to the Admiralty board again, she would this time bring a shotgun, even as she knew she’d made the right choice in keeping her father’s secret. She knew she would miss Miranda Lawson, despite all odds.

She knew she loved turian brandy at least as much as the Normandy’s gravity field loved her. Maybe there was a correlation, between ounces consumed and atmospheric pressure. She was testing her hypothesis when she became distracted with the entirely new set of problems the testing caused.

It seemed that quarians generally, and her specifically, were not designed to drink in positions other than upright. Her straw-- no, no, that didn’t sound right, no self respecting quarian would call it a straw, straws were too...unhygienic. Quarians could not drink out of straws. She was simply… utilizing an emergency induction port to access...damn good turian brandy. That was it. Much better.

The main problem wasn’t the emergency induction port. It was geometry. She could fit the emergency induction port into her filter canister and get her lips around it, sufficient to suck liquid through it, but doing so without lifting her head created an angle such that the induction straw popped free from the cup, cutting off access to the delicious, wonderful brandy.

She was in the field testing stage of a solution, ( _she found lifting her head slightly worked 96% of the time_ ) when a very fine, very well shaped pair of legs appeared over her; a towering mountain of masculinity and…

“Ma’am?”

...propriety.

Of all the things Tali’Zorah knew, (and she could now add _‘solution to the horizontal induction port-source canister transfer issue’_ to that list,) she did not know what had caused Kal’Reegar, the most duty-bound soldier ever to serve the Fleet, to curse out the admiralty board and follow her into exile. If it had been any other male, she might have thought he did it out of some strong emotion he felt for her, but it was Kal, and he was so damn…

...Perfect.

She sighed up at him. “I have told you not to call me that, Kal,” she said.

“No, ma’am,” he corrected, crouching down beside her. This was an improvement, as it meant she could juuuuust barely make out the features behind his faceplate. If she squinted, he looked like he was smiling. “You told me to call you Tali.”

She frowned at him. “That is what I said,” she protested.

“Not the same thing at all,” he said, taking her glass and holding it up in an assessing way. Probably looking for geth in it. Stupid soldier. Stupid handsome soldier with all his propriety. Properness. Proprieperness.

It was entirely probable that she was drunk.

“I have formed a new hypothesis,” she said. “I believe I am drunk.”

“Yes, ma’am, Shepard said as much,” he said, tapping the straw with a fingertip and glancing at her.

“Emergency induction port,” she informed him. “Triple filtered turian brandy. It is really quite good, once you apply the Zorah Geometry Rule.”

He accepted that as the wisdom it clearly was and nodded. “Always did like the turian stuff best, myself,” he said. He fitted the emergency induction port into the slot on his filter canister and her eyes widened as he finished her drink.

“Hey!” she protested. “That was _my_ brandy.”

“Laws of conquest, ma’am,” he said, and rose. She watched his feet as he crossed to the bar. If she were honest, she would admit this was a wonderful development. It gave her an excellent view of his backside. Backsides like his were to be admired and often were, in furtive whispers, by most of the crew.

His fine backside disappeared behind the bar. “You want to talk about what has you drinking alone, holed up in here?” he asked.

“Do _you_ want to talk about what has me drinking alone, holed up in here?” she asked, frowning when he returned to her, only slightly mollified when he handed her a fresh glass of brandy.

He was silent for a moment, considering his words. Always with him, thinking it over, thinking it through, weighing his words and opinions like every one was worth ten times the price of a new ship. The only time he was impulsive was on the battlefield and even then, she was developing a hypothesis that he still thought things over, just much, much more quickly. Bullets were probably the main variable there.

“Rather help cheer you up,” he said, finally. “Don’t much care for wallowing alone over things I can’t fix.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Kal, I think that is the meanest thing you have ever said to me.”

He glanced away, rubbing the back of his helmet, under the enviro-lines. “Just ain’t much help--”

“I like it,” she decided, interrupting him.

He turned his head to look at her and she smiled serenely, fitting her emergency induction port back into place.

“You are drunk,” he said. “C’mon, Tali, let’s get you to bed.”

She almost choked on her brandy. He sighed and even behind his faceplate, she could see him roll his eyes at her. He took her brandy from her and finished it, rising to wash the glass. She decided against standing up, comfortable on the floor, listening to him move around. When he came back, he held out a hand to her, and she took it, feeling a bit like she had when she was a child and her mother had scolded her for staying up too late or running in the engine room.

The Normandy hit a patch of hard air, or possibly an asteroid field. It must have, because getting up became nearly impossible with the way the ship was spinning and knocking. Kal had much better footing when it came to hard-air-asteroid-field evasive maneuvers, and after a minute’s fumbling, simply picked her up, carrying her over his shoulder like a sack of gear. He wrapped one long fingered hand around her upper thigh to hold her steady.

She opened her mouth to protest, found herself face-to-backside with one of her favorite of Kal’s features, and shut her mouth again.

***

“I’m getting some awfully strange readings from the thermal levels, Kenneth,” Gabby said, running through diagnostics. She suspected it wasn’t the program, but the procedure was there for a reason.

“Of course you are,” Kenneth responded, then checked his own boards. She could tell when he saw the temperatures that were bothering her-- his breath hitched slightly and he began to swear in English. Better than Gaelic. When Kenneth swore in Gaelic, they were usually in serious trouble. “You think the lines are clogged?”

The doors behind them opened, but Gabby was too distracted to look up. She exhaled when the diagnostic, against all odds, came up with a programming error. “No--”

“Ma’am. Kenneth,” Kal said from behind them. “Everything alright?”

“Not to bother you--” Kenneth started. Out of the corner of Gabby’s eye, she saw him turn and freeze. She looked over her shoulder and almost choked.

“Is that Tali?” she asked.

Kal shrugged, causing Tali’s rather shapely rear to shift on his shoulder. She kicked a foot out, twisting so she could peek around Kal’s hip. It didn’t appear to bother the male quarian at all-- he shifted his weight slightly, but otherwise held the squirming female securely.

“Hello Gabby, Kenneth,” Tali said. “Do you need any help?”

“No, we’re fine,” Gabby said, before Kenneth could do something stupid, like ask them to help check the ducts. “Are you okay, Tali?”

“I am drunk,” Tali informed her. She turned her head and Gabby could have sworn the other woman was checking out Kal’s behind. “But there are worse things to be, I suppose.”

“Right-o. Kenneth and I were just getting off duty, weren’t we, Kenneth?” Gabby asked.

Kenneth, the stupid lout, looked confused. “We aren’t--”

She pushed him away from the boards and towards the door. Even drunk, either quarian could easily handle the Normandy’s core and EDI would let them know if there was an emergency. “We were,” Gabby said. “Goodnight, Tali, er. Kal.”

Tali watched the door slide closed behind the human couple. “They probably think we are going to do something horrible and carnal,” she mused as Kal started down the stairs to the cot she sometimes slept on, now that Jack had abandoned it for… Well, it wasn’t worth keeping track of where Jack slept, now. She felt Kal’s shoulder go rigid under her stomach, fingers tensing on her thigh. She frowned at his hip, then realized what she’d said.

“Not horrible! I meant horribly carnal,” she said. “Something like out of those novels Liara reads when she thinks no one is watching her, the ones that use words like turgid and moist and manhood. Not that it would be horrible to be carnal with you, though probably after it would be not so good, because of infections and I haven’t been on the right supplements for very long and...”

Tali’s brain caught up with her mouth somewhere around the same time she realized Kal’s shoulders had lost their stiffness and he was laughing, albeit quietly, at her.

She folded her arms across her chest, (no easy feat, considering she was _still_ dangling upside down over his shoulder,) and tried to gather her dignity. “I mean, it would not be such a bad thing, but they have the wrong idea.”

“Don’t know about that, ma’am,” Kal said. “Gonna set you down now.”

  
 Tali slid down his body, ending up on her rump on the cot, seated before him. She squinted up at him. She ran his words back through her mind, picking them apart even as a new hypothesis was born.

“Kal,” she said, reaching up to take his hand. He seemed uneasy with that, shifting his weight slightly, but not pulling away. He had left the Fleet, left his entire life, over her honor, or maybe his own honor, and her hypothesis now was that no man did such a thing for duty alone. It occurred to her how much he had left-- unlike her, she knew he had family living still, family he could not visit easily, not any more. Shepard kept him busy, gave Kal all the targets he could dream of hitting, a cause worth dying for, but it struck her again, all at once; Kal’Reegar was not one to make rash decisions, to act without thought.

“Ma’am?” he said, shifting again, and she blinked, realizing she had been holding his hand and silent for too long. He was large for a quarian male, larger than her, easily, but she had surprise on her side when she pulled suddenly on his arm, tumbling him down onto the cot with her.

They ended up in less of a heap that she’d expected; his reflexes were too good for that. But tip to toe, they laid, his helmet close enough to hers that the faceplates faded to transparency and she could see the man beneath.

He looked tired, more than anything.

Well, handsome more than anything. But tired after that. Perhaps handsome, then rugged, in a dangerous, clean sort of way, _then_ tired, but tired was easily in the top three or four.

War was hard on all of them, it seemed, even soldiers bred for it.

“I have a hypothesis,” she informed him, skimming her fingers along the seals of his visor, over the intake tubes of his helmet.

He relaxed against her at the touch; so close, she could see his eyes heavily lidded with pleasure, focused on her. “More than a few,” he observed.

“This one is my favorite,” she said. “I believe you did not leave the Fleet for honor alone.”

His eyes widened slightly, searching hers. It was hard to read quarian features-- they were much more adept at reading body language, so she spoke to him in that way, tangling her legs with his and drawing him closer.

“Interesting hypothesis,” he said, voice a low rasp. “You done any testing yet?”

“I am planning on it, yes,” she said.

His visor made a soft sound as it hit the deck, followed shortly by her own.


End file.
